valentin vannay

Review Codeanywhere (online code editor) 2016

2016-07-05

Looking for a collaborative online coding editor ? This review is for you ! I recently tried 5 or 6 different platforms to improve my productivity at work and I think it's time to share my humble opinion. I could actually write an article with a more attractive post title like: "THE 20 BEST CODE EDITOR OF 2016 !!" But it's not gonna happen here.. I don't have the time nor the courage so let me get straight to the point:

The price

As you can see you can start coding for free !! Even the paid options are cheaper than most of their competitors. I personally opted for the freelancer package because I needed the 'always on container' option.

Web server (container)

This is probably my favorite feature of this platform. Once you created your project you can off course connect your projects files via github / bitbucket / ftp / amazon etc.... but you can also create what they call a 'container'. This is actually a virtual machine with a development environment ready out of the box. Select your development language and whether your prefer Ubuntu or Centos for the operating system, click create, wait about 10 sec and your all set with a virtual test webserver with a test secured url you can share to anyone.

SSH access

Nothing much to say here but I also think it's super cool to have an root SSH access to the container you create because then you can customize and install anything you want on your virtual machine !

Stability

Compared to other platform this one is pretty stable. Me and my dev team rarely have issues and if we do, the technical support is pretty good and reactive. We often work together on the same file (live pairing enabled) and it is pretty smooth. It is just a little slow if you work on crazy huge files.

The cons

I don't have much to complain about this platform and this is why I chose it ! The only thing I want to say is that their website isn't working very well sometimes. I had a few issue with the registration process and the login and difficulties to find the information I want. But this only concerns their front website. Their editor is flawless <3

Conclusion

As I said before I won't debate or compare why exactly this platform is better than others. But I can tell you that from all the platforms I tried (cloud9, kobra, floobits, codebunk) this is the only one I wanted to keep working with ! :)
Please also not I am not paid to write any of those lines ! I am just happy to share my passion and help other developers that come across my blog !
Wish you all an excellent day !